Asia Pacific

Hello and welcome to another episode of the Dongfang Hour China Aero/Space News Roundup! A special shout-out to our friends at GoTaikonauts!, and at SpaceWatch.Global, both excellent sources of space industry news. Without further ado, the news update from the week of 3 May - 9 May 2021.

Women in space: a senior officer of the Australian Royal Air Force, Catherine Roberts, will become the country’s Space Division new chief next year, Australian ABC News reported. Air Vice-Marshal Catherine Roberts, who is currently the Head of Air Force Capability, will take over the newly created position of Head of Space Division from January, ABC said.

Debris from the Chinese Long March 5B rocket that brought the country’s space station to orbit crashed into the Indian Ocean north of Maldives, U.S. and Chinese officials said. The huge piece of space junk made an uncontrolled re-entry back into Earth's atmosphere over the Arabian Peninsula Saturday night.

The U.S. military has no plan to shoot down the Long March 5B's remnants when they are expected to plunge back on Earth this weekend, the Guardian quoted the U.S. defense secretary, Lloyd Austin. Hope was the rocket would land in the ocean and that the latest estimate was that it would come down between Saturday and Sunday, he said, according to the Guardian.

SpaceWatch.Global has been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. This is “A giant piece of space junk is hurtling towards Earth. Here’s how worried you should be”, originally published 4 May 2021 at The Conversation by Steven Freeland.

Join SpaceWatch.Global's new Space Café "Law Breakfast with Steven Freeland" #03 series where global space law experts discuss the legal issues from everyday space activities. This event will take place on 27 May 2021 at 9:30 am CEST. Space Café "Law Breakfast with Steven Freeland" will analyse current space developments with a legal focus.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is building a deep space dish in Australia and an asteroid telescope in South America. ESA cooperates with the Australian Space Agency to construct a second 35-metre, deep space dish antenna at its existing ground station in New Norcia, Western Australia

The end of April saw the beginning of a new Space Café series, the Space Café Greater Bay Area, hosted by me, Blaine Curcio. Having spent around 10 years in Greater China, and with most of that time spent in Hong Kong and Shenzhen, I have seen firsthand the rapid evolution of China’s space sector, and also the innovation and resources in the Greater Bay Area.

As part of the partnership between SpaceWatch.Global and Orbital Gateway Consulting we have been granted permission to publish selected articles and texts. We are pleased to present “Dongfang Hour China Aerospace News Roundup 26 April - 2 May 2021” .

The space SPAC market took a breather in April, with no announced transactions, but we did have a traditional IPO (remember those?) by MDA in Canada. SpaceX and OneWeb also helped pick up the slack and together raised more money than last month’s three SPAC transactions combined, without even counting Astranis’s US$250 million round.